An Engrossing Conversation with Dan Graham
Photo Credit: Anne Daems: Dan With Sleeping Camels
Daniel Graham is an internationally renowned American artist, writer, and curator. Graham is best known for his integral role in the beginnings of Conceptual Art during the 1960s. His art and writing have been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally, including the Modern Art Oxford, Inhotim Museum, Museion, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Dan Graham’s Yin/Yang Pavilion is installed on an outdoor terrace of Simmons Hall at MIT. I had the honor to ask Dan what creating art means to him, what are some of his favorite punk rock bands, and what he might have told his younger self when he was first starting out as an artist.
UZOMAH: How do you find new areas to explore in your work?
DAN: In the last 10-15 years, most of the newest work I’ve done has been in regionalist situations, either Socialist France or Norway, and involved doing the work in fairly remote historical parks and townships.
U: How can artists build structures better so that the audience can be a part of the work as a work of art and one of practical function?
D: In some of my performance work, such as “Performance – Audience – Mirror,” the audience and their reaction was very much part of the work as it was in my video works such as “Present – Continuous – Past,” now owned and sometimes on display at the Centre of Pompidou; in this work, the audience’s responses and reaction to the mirror and time delay video of their perceptions in changing times is a basis for the work.
Two Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube and Video Lounge, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1981
U: What does creating art mean to you?
D: I’ve always thought of doing art as a passionate hobby, which is most enjoyable when I collaborate with people in other fields of art, such as musicians or in one case, a landscape architect; these are situations where I can learn from my collaborators. I also like to do work that quickly responds to a defined context or need by a certain situation or client.
Heart Pavilion II, Eileen Rosenau Garden, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 1992
U: What would you tell yourself that you have learned about art when you were just starting that might had helped you out more in your career?
D: When I first started doing art, I was influenced by the work of both Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt who, when they worked as guards at MoMA during the big “Russian constructivists” exhibition, was influenced to doing a kind of art that would be a hybrid somewhere between art, design, architecture and printed matter, such as magazine culture; in the end, I learned most from often brief contact with these “minimal” artists as well as these artists own interest in other artists or reading matter. For example, Flavin loved the 19th-century American luminists such as Bierstadt or Thomas Cole or Russian constructivists such as Tatlin; I also picked up that Sol LeWitt liked the “deadpan” humor of Roy Lichtenstein as well. I think I learned most from Judd’s short appreciative reviews on the work of Chamberlain and Oldenburg.
U: How do you view the artist in some respect of being an anthropologist in terms of documenting and capturing people in their elements and behaviors? How do you make your art explore and embrace that?
D: As I grew up reading Margaret Meade and Levi Strauss, I was always interested in aiming my art for a more family-oriented audience rather than to a particular critic or individual collector.
Pavilion/Sculpture for Argonne, Illinois 1978
U: In your film, “ Rock My Religion,” what were some important aspects of the punk and rock scene that you wanted to capture and why? What made the punk and rock scene so compelling during those times?
D: In “Rock My Religion,” the sections of the post-punk hardcore audiences “mash-pit” reactions to the music, I used to link the “shakers” circle dance to the male audience response to the music, as well as to the ecstatic aspect of both post-punk music and religious church reactions, put together. I even linked the huddle moments of American football to hardcore music audience reactions.
U: Who are some of your favorite punk and rock bands?
D: My all-time favorite rock band is the “Kinks,”; whereas my favorite LA psychedelic bands are “The Seeds,” “Love,” and “The Byrds.” For me, the greatest punk band might be the “Ramones,” and maybe the best anti-punk band for me might be “The Fall.”
The Roof Garden Commission: Dan Graham with Günther Vogt Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout, 2014
U: What drew you to writing for Abitare? How is writing different or similar to creating art?
D: I enjoyed doing a column for the Milan Architecture Magazine Abitare, as it allowed me to deal with my hobby, architecture tourism, and also to express my definitely opinionated non-conformist ideas about current fashions in art and architecture. As a writer who loves magazines as media, I enjoyed the idea of doing a monthly magazine column, not only for Abitare but also an astrology column for Domus. When I started doing art projects, many of the artists I admired were also artists/writers. They were important in describing myself as an artist/writer.
U: Can you discuss the influence Pop and Minimal art has over your work and why?
D: At first, I was slightly anti minimal art, as I was more interested in the spectator’s consciousness as they perceived the artwork than seeing it as a subjective fact; I was also very influenced by Naumann’s work, especially by the use of video time delay in the spectator’s perception of their own body. There were many different pop artists. I particularly loved Lichtenstein’s texture of magazine and printed matter, as well as his very Jewish “deadpan humor.” Then, through Judd’s early reviews, I came to the appreciation of Oldenburg’s work through sexuality and mass media as well as the relationship to the body. I appreciated Warhol more as a great writer, but, for me, eventually, a really great artist came to be Chamberlain, whose raw foam rubber couches had a huge influence on my design work, especially the designs to show videos.
For more information about Dan’s artwork, please contact the Marian Goodman Gallery.
